Friday, November 20, 2009

New CCA Commercials

Unless you were running to the fridge to replace your brew or stocking up on more chips, you probably saw the new CCA television ads during the weekend’s broadcast of the pre-Trials-roaring-road thingy.

I thought they were excellent and very catchy, something that’s been needed for a long, long time.

If you didn’t see them, you can watch here. You’ll notice a few familiar faces as they zip past, none more prominent than Paul Savage. He along with John Pineo of CMG Marketing were behind the new spots that are intended to try and re-brand the culture of the game. That’s a wise move as to outsiders, the image is still that of a sport played by old white people.

The campaign also includes a call to action at the end to go to a web site, www.startcurling.ca which is also very well designed and looks like it’s intended to appeal to a younger audience.

The whole program is a huge step up from the horrid My First End campaign where a bunch of zombie-like people talk about playing for the first time. There was zero excitement in the ads and it made going curling about as attractive as getting kicked in the groin.

These new ads, however, are great. Now here’s the complaint (you knew there’d be one, right?). If you go to the CCA’s web site (curling.ca), you won’t find any mention of the Start Curling campaign. There’s no link to the micro-site, no mention of the commercials, nada. In fact there’s still a link to My First End.

Here’s hoping that when the Trials get underway that’s changed. This is a great chance to get new people into the sport and every resource available should be used.

LockItOn:I agree to a certain extent, but it's clear that the curling TV audience is not made up entirely of just curlers. (you can figure this out by doing the math at big events like the Brier where the viewership is in excess of registered curlers in Canada.) Whenever the Brier or Scotties is on, I have people in my office who aren't curlers who talk about it all the time, so I think there's a core of people there and if they're watching curling, they're already showing some interest. By you're right -- the CCA needs to extend its reach. Look at something like RV'ing which advertises (or did) on curling broadcasts or golf companies that have commercials on curling shows.